Page 234 of The Mercy of Dawn

Mikael set the scissors on the counter and took another washcloth to his face and neck, giving his hands a hasty scrub afterward.

“You’ll go in with her?” his mother asked as Mikael was halfway through unbuttoning his jacket and dumping all the odds and ends of his finery on the counter. He hadn’t even bothered to change when his father granted him leave from that fucking dinner. It was straight to the barracks, then the stables.

Mikael nodded before he pulled off his undershirt and worked his boots off. He’d at least do his mother the decency of keeping his pants on.

“How do you want to…?”

He looked at Runa, who tilted her head from side to side at Cyril, thinking.

“You hold her up and keep her steady.” She motioned for Mikael to come and take the spot she stood in. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

When he was capable of stringing more than a few words together, he’d have to thank his mother for making this all remarkably easy for him.

Cyril, mercifully, didn’t put up much of a fight as he hauled her upright from the stool, just slipping a petulant sort of groan as her body weight settled against him. She mumbled something after too, but coherency wasn’t something she had any grasp on.

His mother lifted Cyril’s braid and sighed—nearly half of it had been cut during whatever the fuck happened to her in that cellar, right around her shoulders.

He sincerely hoped Cyril meant it every time she said her hair drove her crazy.

“When she’s feeling up to it, I’ll have someone come and fix it properly for her. But for now”—Runa grimaced as she started working the scissors through the other half of the braid—“this will have to do.”

Runa tossed the remnants of the braid onto the counter and started dismantling Cyril’s clothes.

She ran the scissors up the back of her ruined blouse and pushed the two halves over Cyril’s shoulders and down her arms, hanging limp at her sides. The blood-soaked silk hit the floor beside them, and her simple, black breast band followed a second later.

His mother tsked quietly, shaking her head.

“What is it?” Mikael asked, peering down at Cyril’s back—mottled in purple and filthy, as he knew it would be.

“The bruising, Mika,” Runa said with a breath of disbelief. “That Wren couldn’t mend it all… I knew things were dire, but…”

She shook her head again and sank to her knees in silence.

Mikael was thankful for that silence too.

The condition he found Cyril in was a subject he did not feel like broaching at the moment. Maybe never, truthfully. Just the mention of it had a tight, aching feeling crawling up his spine that he fought to ignore.

Runa cut the last of Cyril’s destroyed pants free from her legs, sweeping them, her underclothes and shirt, and Mikael’s dirty clothes into her arms.

“She’s all yours now.” His mother glanced between him and Cyril and a sad smile formed on her face. “I’ll find you both some clean clothes and be back soon.”

Mikael had nothing other than base instinct guiding him as he gathered Cyril up into his arms and carried her over to the bath. She stirred as he eased down a single step at a time into the gently steaming water, pressing her face into his bare chest.

A single act that quelled the simmering thing inside of him that wanted to scream.

“What’re you…”

Her hoarse and grumbled words gave way to a hearty groan when Mikael sank them both into the warmth of the water. Even for the size of the bath, the water tinged crimson in an instant. Streaks of blood eddied away from the both of them as he walked over to the seating ledge on the far end of the basin.

“I’m giving you a bath because you’re filthy.”

“Oh.” She smiled—a fucking proper, dimple-forming smile—and her hand traveled up, splaying across the crook of his neck. Her fingers dug in weakly, and Mikael was glad they were already sitting. “Thank you.”

“Of course, wrath. Anything for you.”

Cyril just hummed.

It brought Mikael no small amount of displeasure to pry that soothing press of her flesh away from him, to dip her head back in the water and run his fingers through her blood-crusted hair. He focused on the sheet of black silk it became in the darkening water, desperate to keep his eyes and his mind away from the bruises around her neck.